Woman Found Burned Was Strangled, Report Says

November 18, 1999

NEAR WEST SIDE — A woman whose body was found engulfed in flames late Tuesday night in a vacant apartment in a Near West Side Chicago Housing Authority building had been strangled, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office.

Responding to a fire call at about 11:15 p.m. in an apartment at the ABLA Homes in the 1500 block of West 13th Street, firefighters found the body of a woman in the bedroom, said Sgt. Edward O'Donnell of the bomb and arson unit.

The fire had been contained to the seventh-floor apartment, he said. Her body apparently had been doused with a flammable liquid and set on fire, police said.

An autopsy performed Wednesday afternoon concluded the cause of death to be strangulation, a spokeswoman from the Cook County medical examiner's office said. The woman has not been identified, she added.